President Charles E. Odegaard, 1911-1999

Dr. Charles E. Odegaard, president of the University of Washington from 1958 to 1973 and a medieval historian, died Sunday at the age of 88.

The namesake for Odegaard Undergraduate Library was at the helm of the university during some of its most tumultuous times - the student unrest of the 1960s - and earned a reputation as a consummate politician.

President Charles E. Odegaard, 1911-1999

“Charles E. Odegaard has lived through 15 years of riot, famine, pestilence, the Legislature, the faculty, budget cuts, lawsuits and swarms of uppity students. Let’s do something to make it up to him,” The Daily wrote in an ad promoting a retirement event in his honor.

What the students did was hold another demonstration in Red Square, this time filling it with 5,000 appreciative students, faculty, staff and civic leaders and 250 balloons. They presented him with a bust of his likeness, which is housed in the Odegaard Library, announced the naming of the library in his honor, and gave him a sweatshirt with a paraphrase of Louis XIV on the back: “L’Universite c’est moi” (“I am the university”). His response was typical Odegaard, “This . . . just isn’t true. The university is us.”

President Odegaard even won praise from one of the most conservative members of the Board of Regents at the time, Spokane Republican Jack G. Neupert, who attended the retirement event wearing an Archie Bunker sweatshirt. “I am a better human being for Charles having passed my way,” Neupert said. “I want you to know, Charles, that we love you, and that we are pleased to know you and call you friend.”

Rep. Peggy Maxie described President Odegaard as “the finest politician I’ve ever seen.”

President Odegaard knew well the value of understanding human behavior. “A lot turns on the knowledge of human behavior,’’ he often said.

His perception of human behavior earned him high marks as UW president during the Vietnam Era. President Odegaard was praised - and criticized - from all corners during the violent student protests of 1969 - 1970. To the students of the New Left, he represented the enemy - the status quo. But many businessmen, parents and taxpayers thought he was too easy on students. In reality, President Odegaard was in the crossfire, and eventually won praise from all sides for the dignity and reason he brought to the fracas. In the spring of 1970, President Odegaard closed the UW, possibly averting violent deaths like those that occurred at Kent State just weeks later.

At that time President Odegaard told the students, “Unless you are God . . . or unless you choose the path of violence, you have to fall back to reason and acceptance of the consensus.” He urged adults “to better recognize the immediacy the war in Vietnam has to students” and refused to regulate students according to adult demands, saying his role was as a university president, not a “prison warden.” His handling of the war protests became a public symbol of his humanistic style, his skill as a negotiator and his conviction in the power of personal and social relationships.

But from President Odegaard’s perspective the Vietnam Era was not the most important period of his UW presidency. His biggest challenge and greatest accomplishment was moving the university out of its parochial mindset and into national prominence.

When he began his presidency, university departments seldom communicated with each other, and the faculty and administration operated in separate circles. He came determined to move the university toward greater integration by developing faculty-administrators with a goal of building “the Harvard of the West.”

“It was a slow process,” President Odegaard recalled a few years ago. “I had to pull faculty into the administration, but I knew that it was only through collaboration that we were going to get things moving. I was always asking how did we get into this situation, always developing contacts.”

The University of Washington’s national stature climbed and higher education in the state improved. Research increased; the UW began bringing dollars into the state’s economy. President Odegaard was profiled in Time magazine, and is still the only UW president to have been so recognized. He wanted different types of higher education in the state to meet different student needs. His ideal was for a student to have a choice of going to a good regional school, a good state school or a good community college and receive the education desired. President Odegaard strongly supported expanding the community college system and building the UW as the region’s research and graduate institution.

These goals were complicated by growth in the college-aged population due to the post-World War II baby boom. The UW student population more than doubled - from 16,000 to 34,000 - and 35 new buildings were constructed. UW health sciences schools grew with the help of the late U.S. Sen. Warren G. Magnuson. In 1983 President Odegaard was awarded the Washington State Medal of Merit for his services.

For President Odegaard, retirement was not a quiet time: He had witnessed and participated in the development of modern medical education, and spent much of his post-presidential years thinking, writing and advising on medical education. He was an early advocate of incorporating mind-body concepts into Western medicine. His powerful book, Dear Doctor: A Personal Letter to a Physician, is on the bookshelves of many enlightened family physicians throughout the nation.

In the 1986 book, President Odegaard outlined the need to train physicians in the humanities and to teach them to nurture and preserve the physician-patient relationship. It and President Odegaard’s other writings on the role of the modern research university in training physicians opened the eyes and ears of many individual family physicians and medical educators. President Odegaard earned a prominent place at the table in national discussions of health care and physician training, where he spent much of his “retirement.” As a result of his service to the medical profession, he was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine.

He was a member of the Millis Commission that reviewed medical school curricula in schools across the country in the mid-1970s, a regent of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, vice chairman of the Study Commission on Pharmacy of the American Association of the Colleges of Pharmacy, a member of the Citizen’s Commission on Graduate Medical Education of the American Medical Association and a member of the National Advisory Health Council of the U.S. Public Health Service.

President Odegaard was born Jan. 10, 1911 in Chicago Heights, Ill. He was a graduate of Dartmouth College and earned his doctorate at Harvard University. He began his academic career in 1937 as an instructor in history at the University of Illinois. He took a leave of absence to serve in the Navy during World War II (1942-1946), where he earned the rank of Lieutenant Commander. During his wartime service he saw action in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean, as well as in the Pacific Theater of Operations, and was decorated with the Navy Commendation Ribbon for his service. He served as executive director of the American Council of Learned Societies from 1948 to 1952 before accepting a position at the University of Michigan as professor of history and dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts.

In addition to serving as president of the University of Washington, Dr. Odegaard was professor of higher education and a professor of biomedical history. He served as director of Minorities in Medicine for the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation from 1975 to 1976 and was a consultant for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation during most of his retirement years.

He received honorary degrees from numerous universities, including Dartmouth, University of Michigan, University of British Columbia, Gonzaga University, Seattle University and the University of Puget Sound.

Among the numerous boards and commissions on which he served were the National Endowment for the Humanities, Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association Board of Directors, the National Advisory Health Council of the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Sciences).

He also was a board member of several local civic organizations, including the Pacific Science Center, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the Seattle Public Library and Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

President Odegaard was preceded in death by his wife, Elizabeth J. Ketchum Odegaard, who died in 1980. He is survived by his daughter, Mary Ann Odegaard Quarton (a lecturer in marketing and international business at the UW School of Business), her husband, Bruce Roderick Quarton; four grandchildren, Charles August Kriewall (a 1999 UW graduate), Jonathan Cord Kriewall, (a UW freshman), Anne Katharine Quarton and Bradley Robert Quarton; three nieces, Mary Jane Carey, Linda Carey Hughes and Elizabeth Debevoise Staz; a nephew, N. Thomas Debevoise; a cousin, Mary Cord Mason; grandnephews Paul, Timothy, Patrick and Daniel McShane and Thomas Hughes, and grandnieces Hannah and Eva Hughes.

“If it is possible to ascribe to a single individual credit for the rise to prominence of this great university, that person would be Charles Odegaard. His leadership and vision, his character and personality were a perfect match for accomplishing the higher education ambtions of the people of our state and region. He influenced generations of students and faculty, and he is fondly remembered by many friends, admirers, colleagues and alumni. He was a great leader, and this university will miss him.”

UW President Richard L. McCormick

A memorial for President Emeritus Charles E. Odegaard will be at 2:30 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 22 in 130 Kane Hall.
Reception in the Walker Ames Room.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the
UW Odegaard Undergraduate Library
or The Betty Odegaard Fund.¶